Heading out tomorrow afternoon for a few days in San Diego, to see what all the excitement is about with these "beaches" and this "ocean" I keep hearing about. I'll let you know if it's all that it's cracked up to be.

The interesting part may turn out to be flying with my 2 year old for the first time. I know people do it, but I'm a little nervous about it. Anybody have suggestions, a sedative perhaps? Maybe a bloody mary at the airport bar before takeoff.

I've got some new gear coming to the shop soon that I'm excited about. We're bringing in Wingnut bags:wingnutgear.com

I picked up one of these bags (the Hyper 3.0) at the beginning of the summer, and it has since become my favorite and caused envy amongst Danny and Charlie.

So in a week or two, I'll have a full selection available. Why in a couple weeks? Well, they have to finish building the packs, since they are hand made in the USA, and you get to choose colors and such. My general impression is that they have much the same effect as an Ergon pack, with about a 100% simpler design. And, they have large pockets that are accessible while the pack is on, which is so convenient (and also, Wingnut came first, the packs are way lighter, and the pockets better organized).

If you have ever checked out our links section, you might have noticed a little blog called "How to Avoid the Bummer Life". And then you might have noticed that it no longer gets updated. It has been replaced:http://www.allhailtheblackmarket.com/

which is where we came across this:

Which is amazing in its stupidity.

Also, we will be closed on Saturday September 12th. Why you ask? Well, come in the shop and ask Mr. Swinton.

Then, we will be closed again Tuesday Sept 22nd and Wednesday the 23rd, to attend the Interbike tradeshow in Vegas (assuming one of us gets around to buying some plane tickets). Don't worry though, we promise not to have any fun.

We will be open Friday the 18th and Saturday the 19th of September, but I'm going to be in Durango racing in the Single Speed World Championships.

We will be open the Tuesday, Weds and Thursday of that same week, but Danny will be off doing something that has something to do with the Sept 12th thing.

And also, working backwards, we will be open Saturday the 5th, but Tony will be off attending some pre-wedding brou-ha-ha for some friends of his.

So basically what I'm getting at is September is going to be pretty nuts around Bikeworks.

Okay, time to pack my swim trunks. It's nearly time to unleash my farmers tan on the unsuspecting beach-goers of San Diego. Bwa ha ha ha.

Looks like August is nearly over, and as far as most people are concerned, summer is about done.

Looking back, I had plenty of good riding, far more racing than I anticipated this summer, but I feel like not nearly enough "epics". Not once did I get totally lost with Charlie, nor did I hike my bike for over an hour at any given time. Perhaps those are more spring and fall activities, but I'm feeling long overdue.

It's time to start putting miles in on the single speed. The SSWC are just around the corner, and I've barely ridden mine a couple of times in the past couple of months.

Oooh, I just had an idea of something to write about. Here is a Bikeworks micro-review.....

Item: WTB Vulpine Tires, 29er

Verdict: Scary

Booya, shortest, most useless review ever. I guess I could elaborate. They held air fantastically as a tubeless conversion on my Stans rims, so I'm excited to try other tires from WTB for that purpose. On the one day I rode them in the East Mtns. when there was actually some moisture on the ground, the were surprisingly grippy, and as expected, unbelievably fast rolling.

On dry days, in the south foothills, for example, these were simply scary. Clearly not a tire designed in New Mexico.

Of course one look at the tread pattern tells you so, and lets you know that I'm kind of stupid for hoping they'd be anything other than deadly in loose over hard pack.

I think I was mostly curious about how they compared to Stans Raven tire, which I have begun referring to as a "textured innertube". I think they are just a little more grippy in corners, not as good in a straight line (think rear wheel spinning out when mashing).

So this video is old, and most regular internet-time-wasters have seen it already, but for those who haven't......

It's done so well it scares me a little.

Speaking of serious road biking, Swinton raced the State Champ road race yesterday. No spectacular results to speak of (he raced the Pro 1,2 race). Some personal victories included winning the "bro race", i.e. beating all his buddies, and not getting "shelled" until the beginning of the last lap.

We got hooked up with a copy of Thats It Thats All this week, by our local Red Bull rep:

This movie is getting me all messed up, it's too early to be thinking about snowboarding. It's such a sweet movie. It came out last winter. The whole thing was filmed with some awesome cameras in HD, and watching it with an HDDVD on an HD TV is a little mind melting.

People keep talking about it being a good season this year for snow. Maybe with this new schedule of ours, I'll be getting some Mondays in this year.

I've been a delinquent updater once again.Not a whole lot to talk about though.

Last weekend, Danny and I and our lil' families went up and race cross country in Taos. It was good times. It's a very fun, and extremely hard course. Up some of the steepest dirt roads that I have ever seen. And some very tight single track up around 12,000 feet.

The course was very complicated, doubling back and crossing over itself a number of times, with a slightly different route for each of the three laps done after the big fire road climb.Fortunately, it was extremely well organized, with a ton of volunteers to steer you in the right direction at every intersection, and everything ran smoothly.

Danny, true to form, pinched a tube, and then proceeded to blow up his chain. This worked well for me, because it slowed him down to the point where I could catch him. So we rode the final 1/3 of the race together, coming across the finish line as team Bikeworks.

My age group (19-29) was actually faster than Danny's (30-39), which is unusual, and the same finishing time resulted in a 3rd place finish for Danny, and 4th place for me, in our respective age groups in expert (cat 1).

And then it was back to work with us. Our final week without Tony, Danny and I were certainly feeling a little worn down. The shop is just a little difficult to run with two guys.

I've procured a couple of new rides for the stable lately. First was a Swobo Crosby.

This bike is bad to the bone. The frame is nicer than I anticipated, with some details that you can't really see on the picture. The downtube is six sided, with a huge interface with the head tube, and then is rotates and has a hug connection with the BB. A carbon fork that gives a much smoother ride than I anticipated. Sliding dropouts, disc capable, gearing capable, solid parts spec out of the box, and the most rad color scheme I've seen in a while. Even the tires are perfect for our foothills. It also comes with the Sram Torpedo hub, which looks vaguely like a coaster brake hub, and can be converted between singlespeed or fixed gear with 5 turns of a small flathead screw. The screw sits inside of the axle, and is accessed via the driveside axle nut, which is open on the end.

And the bike retails for $1,000. This thing is a lot of bike for the money.

I also just replaced my Soma Rush frame for another of the same, except this one is my size. Also, it's white, and awesome, because white bikes are awesome.

If anyone is interested in a 55cm black track frame and fork, this thing is a beaut, and it'll go for a good price.

And with that, I'm going to go pay bills on my day off, because it'll be nice and quiet at the shop, and I haven't paid bills in a number of weeks.